Sindiwe Magona
Sindiwe Magona was born on 23 August 1943, in the village of Gungululu in rural Eastern Cape (formerly Transkei). The first born of eight children, Magona earned her secondary and undergraduate education by correspondence, and later won a scholarship to study for her Master’s Degree in Social Work at Columbia University in the United States of America.
Magona is one of many internationally prominent South African writers whose work is informed by her experience of impoverishment, femininity, resistance to subjugation and being a domestic worker. She traversed South Africa’s racially-defined socio-cultural-economic spaces while simultaneously being a mother, wife and community leader in a township. These interlaced themes and realities are pronounced throughout her literary career.
A former primary school teacher and civil servant, she is a prolific author who has produced nine books, among them an autobiographical work, a collection of short stories, novellas and an anthology of poetry.
She has produced various plays and continues to lecture and deliver key addresses at universities and conferences, both locally and internationally. Until her retirement in 2003, she contributed immeasurably in various capacities to the work of the United Nations (UN), an organisation she served for 20 years.
Even in retirement, she continues to pen literary works, to initiate writers’ conferences, lead women’s rights advocacy groups and write children’s educational books. Among her internationally acclaimed works are Beauty’s Gift; Living, Loving, and Lying Awake at Night; To My Children’s Children; Teach Yourself Xhosa; and Push-Push and Other Stories. Her plays include I Promised Myself a Fabulous Middle-Age and Vukani.
Magona is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Molteno Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement for her role in promoting isiXhosa, the Permio Grinzane Terre D’Otrantro, and the Department of Arts and Culture Literary Lifetime Achievement Award (all three received in 2007); the Bronx Recognises Its Own Fiction Award in 2000; a Fellowship for Non-Fiction from the New York Foundation of the Arts; the Xhosa Heroes Award; and the UNdimande Grand Prize. The Hartwick College of New York conferred her with an honorary doctorate in 1993. She was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize in 2009. (http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/sindiwe-magona)
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BELAB and mother tongue education: an interview with Sindiwe Magona
2024-01-17"Learning another child’s language presupposes proximity. We don’t, as yet, have that, as the country is hopelessly separated along economic strata."
Skin we are in: an interview with Sindiwe Magona
2018-03-14"The science that underpins what we usually say without having any proof: people have more in common than they have differences. Now, to be told the fact that skin colour is less than 1% of what comprises the human body – 0,001% – is staggering."